


The Reveal is The First Step

by Telaryn



Series: Second Chances [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Leverage
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Emotional Baggage, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e05 Girl in the Flower Dress, Gen, Hacking, Multiple Crossovers, Not What It Looks Like, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Skye Feels, Tension, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2258487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Skye hits the internet to investigate her possible sister, she hits the mother of all firewalls - shutting down the Bus and forcing the confrontation and reveal she never expected to have.</p><p>In other news, surviving death has made Coulson more forgiving of Clint's "Clint-ness" than he used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reveal is The First Step

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why this has taken me so long to finish! I owe you all huge apologies. I think the longer I let it lie, the more terrified I became of a good, sound Jossing.
> 
> This is the fic that "The Magical Place" forced me to abandon when it gave me the potential for all sorts of juicy Clint/Coulson angst, the one where we bring the Leverage folk more fully into the Agents of SHIELD universe. While we do find out the truth of Clint's suspicions, Skye and Faith's story is not finished here...not by a long shot.

_”Maybe I can help.”_

It was like he’d reached out and snatched her back from the edge of a fall she never would have survived. Skye’s heart was racing and she couldn’t seem to make herself breathe for several seconds.

Of course then he had passed her a box – twin to the one he’d presented Miles with just hours earlier – and reality had dragged her down again. _He’s not throwing you out,_ she thought, turning the silver circle over in her hands. _And you did lie to them…_ Coulson had no reason to trust her, but he had offered to help her _before_ presenting her with the cybernetic inhibitor.

It counted for a lot.

“What about the DNA Agent Barton gave you?” Coulson asked her when they gathered in his office the next afternoon to address Skye’s search. “You haven’t given it to Simmons to check yet?”

She thought about the tiny case Clint had given her the last time she’d seen him – a case, he’d told her, that contained DNA from the woman he believed to be her sister. “I don’t trust it,” she admitted finally. “I mean, I spend literally years digging up what amounts to nothing and Agent Barton walks into my life with the answer to everything? What are the odds?”

“Your one reliable piece of data is a redacted SHIELD memo,” Coulson wisely pointed out. “Barton has been SHIELD for a very long time, and he’s…” Here Coulson actually coughed. “He’s very good at finding out information he isn’t supposed to know.”

Skye wasn’t sure why she was motivated to argue with him, but there were questions she couldn’t just ignore. “You said yourself that Slayers, or whatever they are, aren’t affiliated with SHIELD.”

“Not officially,” Coulson conceded, “although there have been occasions when the two organizations have worked together. They work almost exclusively in the realm of the supernatural, which is farther from the norm than SHIELD likes to spend its resources.”

Given the things she’d experienced since accepting Coulson’s invitation to get on the Bus, Skye wasn’t sure whether that information was reassuring or not. “I’d like to do a little online research before I go any further,” she said at last, feeling her gut twist in anticipation of how this next part was likely to go. “Unfortunately with this on…” Her voice trailed off as she raised her arm to show him the bracelet he’d given her the night before.

Coulson’s lips pursed thoughtfully. “You can work here,” he said finally. “In my office, where I can monitor your activity. That way I can smooth your way if need be and we’re not falling back into the trap of keeping things from each other.”

Skye was so relieved he hadn’t shut her down out of hand that she agreed immediately – running downstairs to her bunk to retrieve her laptop. The first three places she looked didn’t kick off any reaction from her bracelet, and painted a portrait of a young woman who looked as though she’d had an upbringing worse than Skye’s. “She and Agent Barton were friends when they were kids?” she asked, needing confirmation from Coulson of what she remembered as she looked over Faith’s records from a women’s prison in north California.

“Remind me to have Clint tell you about his childhood sometime,” Coulson replied, not looking up from his reports.

She thought for a second about bringing up Faith’s murder charges, but before she said anything, Skye remembered that in addition to his other duties for SHIELD Clint and his partner were assassins. _Context is everything,_ she reminded herself, clicking on a fresh piece of data her best web crawler had brought back to her.

Skye had run into firewalls before, but in hacking terms it was like running into a wall of pure napalm. She was so startled by what had happened that she completely missed the worm her probe had triggered.

Listening to the stream of unexpected curse words from Coulson as the Bus’ entire computer system went BSOD, she wondered if anyone would believe her that it had been an accident.  
***********************************  
“It’s not funny,” Clint protested as he slid his phone back in his pocket to the sound of Natasha’s only partially smothered laughter. “He threatened me! He actually threatened me!”

“You stranded him in the middle of Death Valley!” his partner reminded him. “In a non-functioning plane! In his position I’d have done more than threaten you.” Natasha drew a deep, steadying breath, finally suppressing the worst of her giggles. In his current mood Clint would have pointed out that he could still see sparks of amusement in her green eyes, but he really didn’t want to give her any reason to force him to deal with this situation on his own. “How much time did he give you?”

“Twelve hours,” Clint grumbled. “At least they’ve got a pretty good idea what happened. Skye was apparently doing some research online about her family when everything blew back at them.” A call to Faith confirmed that the strange little group she called her family did count a hacker among them.

 _“Aw, man,”_ Faith said when he filled her in on Coulson’s predicament, _“you should have told me the girl was a hacker – I could have warned you this was going to happen!”_ Which didn’t help Clint’s immediate problem, but made him feel weirdly better about the whole mess.

What did help a lot was when she put the hacker in question on the phone, and the man – Hardison – didn’t give Clint any struggle about fixing what had happened. _“Communication dude,”_ he said when Clint laid out what they thought had taken place. _“I knew Faith had gotten word that she possibly had a sister out there, but come on! The fact that the girl is a hacker is information I could have used weeks ago.”_

And there was really nothing Clint could say in response. Hardison obviously had more questions, but quickly figured out that Clint wasn’t the one to give him the answers he needed. _“I’ll need to access the system directly,”_ he said, the tone of his voice suddenly cautious. _“That going to be a problem?”_

 _Agent Phil Coulson, I’d like you to meet Alec Hardison – arguably the greatest hacker in the world and the man who took down your system without even trying to. It’s totally okay for him to get direct access to the network, right? He just wants to fix what he broke – he won’t take advantage of anything._

Even in Clint’s head it sounded ridiculous. _Maybe if I offer to pinky swear?_

“I can get you to the site,” he said finally, “but permission to directly access the network is going to have to come from the guy in charge.”

 _“Hey, no sweat off me,”_ Hardison said. _“It’s not like we’re working with a lot of choices here.”_

Faith came back on the line then, so she and Clint could work out travel plans.  
*************************  
Eliot desperately hoped Faith wasn’t promising more than they could deliver. SHIELD were the shadows behind the shadows – Eliot didn’t like the idea that Faith had even an indirect connection to them, much less that three of them were now being flown directly into government hands to clean up one of Hardison’s messes.

He glanced across the hold at the hacker in question. Hardison had finally lost interest in sniping at him, and was engrossed in whatever information was being fed to him on his smart phone. Eliot was pretty sure between the two of them he and Faith had made their point about him not messing around – pushing the issue any further was just going to annoy Hardison into pushing back.

Faith had taken over the empty co-pilot’s seat when they found out her friend’s partner had elected to stay behind. “You can’t fly,” Eliot had felt compelled to point out.

“It’s all right,” the SHIELD agent said. “I’ve flown this bird by myself more than a few times.”

Barton seemed okay, at least. Eliot had done some checking on the specialist after his initial phone call alerting Faith about her possible half-sister, and everything he’d uncovered said that Clint Barton was the kind of man they could deal with. Admittedly Faith hadn’t been too forthcoming about their shared history, except to say that it had never been sexual. Eliot hadn’t been able to resist giving her an impressively lifted eyebrow at that, which was when she told him how her friend was currently bending SHIELD’s rules against fraternization with a former superior.

“It’s complicated,” she said, “but from what little Clint’s told me they’re good together.”

They were in the air before she finally admitted the person they’d accidentally pissed off _was_ the former superior officer in question. _You are so lucky I love you,_ he thought, staring daggers at the back of Faith’s head. There was no way this was going to end well.  
************************************  
“You told him about me and Coulson, right?” Clint asked Faith through their helmet mikes, trying to resist the urge to acknowledge the itch between his shoulder blades. It screamed that somebody was staring at him who didn’t wish him well.

The dark-haired beauty laughed. “Trust me – he’s not staring at you like that because he thinks we got freaky together.” She sobered slightly. “Eliot knows the kind of world you live in really well. Too well. If it wasn’t for Skye he wouldn’t have let us get on this plane with you.”

Clint tried to balance what she was saying against what he knew of the Faith he’d run with in his teenage years and couldn’t make the two fit. “It’s complicated,” she said softly, idly tracing patterns on the console with a fingertip. “When I knew you, I never imagined this kind of life was in the cards for somebody like me.” She glanced at him out of the corner of one eye. “Never figured you for a government spook.”

He winced. “Don’t use that word. Please – it makes me feel like I’m in an episode of Scooby Doo.” Clint paused, thinking of the twists and turns his life had taken in the past couple years. “On the other hand…” Dragging his focus back to the situation in front of him he asked, “Why do they have the cyber equivalent of a nuclear warhead protecting any information about you?” Now it was his turned to look at her. “No offense, but any kind of protection that can shut down an entire SHIELD mobile headquarters looks like overkill for one person.”

Faith was silent for a long moment, and Clint wondered if he’d overstepped his bounds. “I killed some people,” she said at last. “I was doing time at a women’s prison in northern California when I had to get sprung to help stop an apocalypse.” She risked a cautious glance at him. “I told you before I headed west that my life had taken a seriously freaky turn.”

She had indeed. Clint remembered thinking that Faith was just trying to let him down easy without telling him her real reason for running. Now though… “Faith, you’re talking to a man who spent several weeks of his life overshadowed by an alien consciousness.” Memory of the deaths he’d caused while under the Tesseract’s control began to crowd in close on his thoughts again. He blew out a quiet breath. “I think you’re gonna find I’ve gotten a lot more open to the idea of seriously freaky.”  
************************************  
Faith didn’t bother telling Clint that she already knew about him falling victim to Loki’s powers. Even though she was largely retired from the supernatural game, you didn’t have to be “in the business” as it were to have known details about the invasion that culminated in what the media had labelled “The Battle of New York”. Then you factor her family’s natural paranoia into the equation and Clint coming back into her life after nearly two decades had sparked one of Hardison’s “special” background checks.

He’d come up clean – which even Eliot had to admit was unusual for a SHIELD agent – but Faith knew that even if he’d come up the human equivalent of a one way ticket back to jail, she still would have given him the benefit of the doubt. She certainly would have listened to what he had to say about Skye and her possibly being Faith’s half-sister.

“Did you ever meet the mom-beast?” she asked abruptly, watching the clouds streak by the canopy outside. “I forget.”

“She was gone by the time we met,” Clint said. “You told me stories, but I never had the…pleasure.” Faith snorted softly at the edge of irony in his tone. “What makes you think she’s related on your mother’s side? From what little you’ve told me, your dad did his share of wild-oat sowing back in the day.”

Faith shook her head – she didn’t even hesitate. “Nate’s not perfect, but what happened with my mom was a fluke. His own parents tried to keep him from knowing about me.” She sighed, remembering the tumultuous last few years of her mother’s too-short life. “I know her dealer was pimping her out. She would have been a perfect candidate to get pregnant and lose her child to family services.” Faith had thought she was keeping a close enough eye on her mother that she would have at least noticed a pregnancy, but in the privacy of her own mind she was forced to admit that she’d been looking for a way free of her Ellen Maguire’s drama even then.  
**********************************  
The sight of the hi-tech transport plane sitting in the middle of the Mojave Desert with its ramp already down and waiting made the whole mess even more vividly real to Clint. “Tempers are going to be really short in there,” he said to his passengers as they gathered at the back of the plane. “Please try not to take any of it personally.”

Eliot glanced at Faith. “Remind me again why I let you talk me into this?”

“They should be grateful,” Hardison pointed out as Clint hit the hatch release that lowered their own ramp. “I didn’t ask for the government spooks to come calling.” Clint saw Faith smother a grin with her hand and decided for the sake of expediency to let Hardison’s use of the term slide.

 _Six weeks._ Adrenaline had kept him from focusing on how long it had been since he’d actually seen Coulson, never mind since the two of them had spent any quality time alone with each other. _And we’re not going to change that now,_ he thought ruefully, trying to ignore the sensation of walking through a blast furnace as they crossed the distance separating the quinjet and the Bus. This was the kind of screw-up that required time and space to make right, something Clint knew it was going to be a long time before Coulson was willing to allow himself, let alone the two of them.

“Goddamn I need a vacation,” he grumbled as they started up the ramp. Agents Ward and May were waiting for them at the top; one look from May was all it took for Clint to confirm his suspicions. “All right,” he said, turning to the three people trailing in his wake, “he’s definitely _not_ in a good mood. Can we at least try not to be dicks about this?”

“You and the hacker need to head up to his office,” May said, before any of the three following Clint could offer further commentary. “The other two can wait on this level or up in the common room – their choice.”

“Where are we going to get the test taken care of?” Faith asked. Clint nodded at the lab sitting just beyond the transparent partition. “Eliot and I’ll stay down here,” she said. She glanced back at the hitter, who shrugged. “When you’re ready bring her down here so I can get a look at her.”

Clint grinned in spite of the nervous gyrations of his gut. “Try not to scare the science babies, huh?”

Neither Ward nor May followed him upstairs, which was reassuring on the one hand – on the other it spoke volumes about the mood Coulson was in. Clint took the stairs two at a time, Hardison staying close on his heels. “Self-contained command module,” Hardison said, whistling. “Obviously capable of disconnecting entirely from the larger SHIELD network or we would be having a very different conversation.”

Clint felt his heart sink as they started up the last staircase separating them from Coulson’s office. _He’s going to kill me as slowly and painfully as he can manage._

“Enter!” was the command when he knocked tentatively on the door separating them from the heart of the Bus. _Here we go._

“You called?” he asked, edging into the spacious room. Coulson was behind his desk, engrossed in paperwork. Skye was sitting off to Clint’s right, looking miserable. After a beat, Coulson finally looked up – a flash of “don’t try to be cute here” in his eyes.

“I really don’t need this right now, Clint.” His gaze slid past Clint to settle on Hardison. “I don’t know who you are, but you have two minutes to set my system right before I bring the fires of hell down on your head.”

Clint heard the hacker inhale sharply and reached back automatically to grip his arm warningly. “That’s why we’re here,” he said carefully. “This was all just a huge misunderstanding, because _somebody_ doesn’t know how to follow instructions.” He glanced over his shoulder at Skye, who – impossibly – looked younger and more lost than she had the last few times he’d seen her.

“I was just trying to get a sense of her!” Skye protested, coming to her feet. Clint’s sharp eyes saw light flash off a silver bracelet encircling her right wrist. _It has been an interesting couple of weeks._ “You never told me you had _Alec-freaking-Hardison_ running interference for her!” She blinked, and Clint could see her putting the pieces together at last. “Oh my God,” she half-gushed, half-wailed. “You’re him. You’re really him.”

“Clint,” Coulson said in his _I’m about to make everybody’s life extremely miserable_ voice.

“I know, I know,” he said, all hopes for a peaceful reunion with his lover rapidly fading. Turning to face Hardison he said, “You remember what everybody told you, right?”

The hacker looked affronted. “I don’t remember talk man – I remember a lot of threats from people who need my good will and services.” He shook his head before Clint could say anything else. “Yeah, yeah, ‘course I remember.”

“Good,” Clint said, forcing eye contact with the younger man, “because that man behind the desk over there? Can kill you in more ways than I think even Eliot knows how to do. And in the mood he’s in right now, I’m pretty sure he’ll do it without giving you fair warning.”

When he was certain Hardison believed him, Clint risked a glance at Coulson. “Can I take Skye down to Simmons? Or do you want her up here for something else?”

Before Coulson could answer Skye interjected, “Maybe I should stay up here – watch Alec…um, Mr. Hardison work? Make sure everything goes the way it..?”

Clint was grateful Hardison seemed to recognize Skye’s suggestion was born out of some serious fangirling and not any aspersions against his skill. Before they could continue down that road however, Coulson caught his eye. “Get her out of here,” he said softly, in a tone that brooked no further argument. Clint felt himself automatically draw to attention in response, but managed to keep from snapping off a salute.

“You heard the man, runt,” he said, turning his attention on Skye again. “Let’s go.”

As they reached the door he heard Hardison say, “Look – like I told your boy back on the plane. If somebody had just bothered to tell me the cyber bandit over there was going to come sniffing around I could have stopped a lot of this from…”

“He is never going to trust me again,” Skye moaned softly as the two of them reached the relative safety of the hallway.

Catching hold of her wrist, Clint ran his thumb across the surface of the bracelet. “He didn’t cuff you like this for exposing the Bus to a cyber-attack,” he said, accusation shading his tone. “What have you really been up to?”

He’d gotten so used to the idea of Skye and Faith being related that Clint fully expected her to get defensive. Instead the girl just looked miserable. “I compromised an op,” she admitted, her shoulders slumping slightly. “Coulson found out that I infiltrated SHIELD for my own agenda, and even after I came clean he put this leash on me so I can’t go anywhere even remotely interesting on the net without Big SHIELD shutting me down.”

Clint’s momentary surge of worry was eased by the knowledge that if Skye had truly been a danger to the team or to SHIELD, Coulson would have just had her sucked out an airlock at thirty-thousand feet. _Man does love his projects, though,_ he thought, taking Skye firmly by the shoulder and turning her towards the staircase. “Walk, runt.”

“He’ll get over it,” Clint said gently as they made their way down the spiral staircase to the common room. “Speaking as somebody who has pissed him off in more ways than you can imagine over the years, just behave yourself and when he decides he’s done being angry everything will get back to normal.”

“I can’t wait,” Skye said, continuing towards the stairs leading down to the lab without breaking stride.  
************************  
Even by Faith’s admittedly weighted standards, the SHIELD science geeks were twitchy. “Fitz” was always in motion, moving from one piece of equipment to the next – presumably with purpose, although he never took his eyes off them and seemed to resent their presence in his lab as a violation. Simmons, on the other hand, was calm and collected, if a little vague. She’d offered them refreshments, and then returned immediately to her microscope.

“How’re you holding up?” Eliot asked softly, his drawl like warm water on her frayed nerves. Faith laughed, but the sound was flatter than it should have been.

“Trying really hard not to think about where this is heading,” she admitted. “In case you might have forgotten, I don’t really do well with things involving family, or my past. The idea that…” She blew out a sharp breath, trying with almost no success to get her tangled emotions under control. “Wonder if they’d let me take a couple swings on that?” she asked finally, eyeing the heavy bag mountedin the corner.

Eliot put his hands on her shoulders, and when she didn’t immediately flinch or pull away slipped his arms the rest of the way around her. “I don’t think we need to be scaring these people right now.” He kissed her hair. “If you can’t do this you know, just say the word…”

She shook her head, then lay back against his shoulder with a small sigh. “We can’t leave Hardison up there without an exit strategy. Sophie would kick both our asses.”

He snugged his arms around her more securely. “If you need to go, I can handle keeping Hardison safe.”

That startled a genuine laugh out of Faith. “Yeah, and if I leave _you_ in here without an exit strategy, Nate will kick both our asses.”

“I can handle Nate,” Eliot insisted.

Faith pulled away at that, turning to face him. “We’ve already talked about this. You’ve probably got more at stake being here than I do. Even if they decide they want to hold me for whatever reason’s got you so twisted up inside, Clint wouldn’t let them. I trust him.”

“You haven’t seen…” Eliot began, then stopped. Faith saw how much effort it took for him not to continue the argument, and she felt the first real fluttering of fear she’d known since agreeing to check out Clint’s admittedly insane theory. “Faith, SHIELD likes shiny, powerful things and you’re about as shiny and powerful as anything out there. I know you trust your friend, but…”

“I trust you more,” Faith said. “And I hear what you’re saying – I really do – but do you really think there is anything on this plane that can hold me if I don’t want to be held?”

She was going to continue in defense of them being here when she caught movement at the edge of her vision. Spinning around, she saw two pairs of feet descending the spiral staircase that Clint had taken Hardison up what felt like a lifetime ago. The first set of boots she recognized as Clint’s. The second… “Crap,” Faith breathed, feeling her stomach turn to stone as the two of them reached the bottom of the stairs.

Eliot moved into position at her side. “Okay, now I see why he set things in motion.” Clint opened the doors to the lab, but let Skye enter first. The girl was clearly on edge – her eyes darted around the room before settling on Faith.

“Well you certainly act enough like me for us to be related,” Faith said, crossing her arms over her chest. Skye flinched, pulling up short and forcing Clint to do the same in order to keep from tripping over her. “What’s the matter – Barton’s word not good enough for you?”

The girl was silent for several moments, but Faith could tell automatically from Skye’s expression that she was weighing her options for response. “Would it have been good enough for you in my shoes?”

Faith grinned and knew it was feral by the way Skye drew back – stumbling into Clint again. The archer grimaced, put his hands on her shoulders, and moved the girl forcibly two steps to the right. Faith continued towards her, “getting her swagger on”, as Sophie had once referred to her aggressive stride. “That’s why I sent you a sample of my DNA, precious,” she said, leaning deliberately into Skye’s personal space. “So you wouldn’t have to take anybody’s word for it.”  
**********************  
“You didn’t even open the case, did you?” Clint asked. Skye flinched again at the unexpected sound of his voice on her left, losing her fight to keep from backing up a step and restoring some distance between her and her alleged “sister”.

“I’m a _hacker_ ,” she protested, suddenly wishing that Hardison was in the room with them. Even though she’d pissed him off by taking a run at his firewalls, Skye had to believe that he would have understood why she’d taken the route she had. “I was trying to see if it was worth risking the test – hitting the net seemed to be the fastest way to figure that out.”

“You know, in a really weird way the kid’s right.” The new speaker was another person Skye didn’t know, although his body language clearly connected him to Faith. “Even if she didn’t mean to, she got us all together fast enough.”

Skye realized that Faith was still looking at her. “So,” she said, straightening up slightly and giving Skye a hair more breathing room, “we gonna do this thing or what?”

FitzSimmons had moved to the edge of their conversation. With a small, shaky sigh, Skye pulled the flat case Clint had given her a lifetime ago and handed it to Jemma. “It’s my mother’s and my hair,” Faith said as Simmons opened the case. “Obviously with me here if you need blood or something, have a ball.”

Jemma’s eyes took on a slightly predatory gleam. “Is it true that you’re a Slayer?” Despite her nerves, Skye almost laughed at the way Faith drew instinctively closer to her friend.

“Can you use the hair?” Clint asked, trying to draw Simmons back on task. Looking slightly crestfallen, the girl nodded.

“Skye, if you could come take a seat, I’ll extract a sample from you to run the comparison.”

Glancing again at the newcomers, Skye followed Simmons a short distance away and sat down where the girl indicated. “How are you holding up really?” Jemma asked, putting her back to them and running her fingers lightly across Skye’s hair.

“Dunno,” Skye admitted. “It all just seems too…neat…you know?” she said, echoing her earlier conversation with Coulson. “I mean, I’ve been looking for my family for as long as I can remember. What are the odds that…ow!” She yelped in surprise as a sharp thread of pain exploded on her skull.

“Sorry,” Jemma said in a tone that was decidedly but. “I need the root intact if the test is going to work.” She showed Skye the thin strand of brown hair she’d managed to forcibly liberate. “Although the idea of getting a vial of actual Slayer blood…” Her voice trailed off, the tone almost longing.

“How long is it going to take?” Skye asked, imagining what Faith might do if Simmons pushed the idea of a blood draw and not liking the results one bit.

“Oh not long,” Simmons chirped. “I promise – before you know it we’ll have your answer.”  
**************************************  
“She’s worth knowing,” Clint said gently. Faith had withdrawn almost to the door, and while Eliot had let her go he was still watching her carefully. “Coulson’s had her working with Nat and me and she’s got a lot of potential.”

“You know me better than that,” Faith said, looking up at him. “You really think I’m worried about _her_ being worth knowing?” She snorted softly. “I got so lucky with Nate being my father. What do I have to offer this girl if we are related? A mom who was a burnt out junkie whore who never gave a damn about anyone but herself.”

“Nate wouldn’t like to hear you talk like that,” Eliot growled. 

“Nate remembers a girl I never knew,” she countered. “Trust me – we’re not doing Skye any kind of favor by linking her to the Mom-Beast.”

 _Some wounds never heal,_ Clint thought, studying his friend. The scales had been stacked against Faith almost from the word go, but she’d never given up. Now she had everything she’d ever wanted, but under all of the attitude and genuine happiness with her life was still the damaged little girl who’d lost so much so early.

“When we have time, you’re going to have to explain to me why this is so important to you.”

Successfully suppressing his own startle reflex, Clint turned to see that Coulson had slipped into the lab while they were all distracted. _Are we okay?_ he thought, searching the older man’s face for an answer.

“I’m not going to kiss you in front of everybody,” Coulson murmured, the hint of a smile hovering about his lips, “but I would like to stick around if you could.”

A flush of warmth spread through Clint’s body, tempered only by the realization that none of the people he’d brought with him to the bus would be in the mood to hang around. _Wait a minute…_ “Did you leave Hardison alone in your office?”

“There’s not much point in pretending I can keep him from finding out whatever he wants to know,” Coulson said. “That young man is on more watch lists than most people realize exist. I figured it was more prudent in the end to gain his good will if I could.”

“You’ve got May watching him,” Clint said, matching Coulson’s grin with one of his own.

Looking pointedly past Clint’s shoulder, Coulson said, “I think Agent Simmons has some news for us.”  
*******************************  
 _My…cousin?_ Skye hadn’t realized until Simmons delivered the results that she’d been gradually warming to the idea of having a sister…even a half-one. She had a name for her mother now though – Stella Maguire – and the possibility of finding out more.

“I don’t have a lot of memories of your mom,” Faith admitted. “Auntie Stell was still pretty respectable the last time I knew her. My mom was really good at pushing people away by that point too, so even if she wanted to help us I never would have known about it.”

It was still a lot to process, going from literally nothing but a SHIELD memo to having names and the potential for faces…identities…

“You okay runt?” Clint asked, bumping his shoulder lightly against hers. Recovering quickly, Skye nodded.

“How about you?” she asked, looking at Faith and hoping the need for reassurance that surged through her at the sight of her cousin wasn’t as pathetically obvious as it felt. “Relieved?”

Snorting, Faith pushed herself off the wall and closed the distance that separated them. “Happy for you,” she said, taking Skye’s hand in hers. “Being related to me is one of those double edged sword kind of things. You seem cool, and Clint says you’re going to be really good at this spy stuff someday, so cousin’s probably as close as you want to get to my mess.”

“There are fascinating genetic possibilities though,” Jemma interrupted. “We already know Skye is a genetic oddity, and being related to a Slayer…” Skye was waiting for her to bring up the subject of Faith’s blood again, but before Simmons could say anything, Coulson spoke up.

“It might help if you were willing to stick around for a few days,” he said. “Let FitzSimmons run some tests…”

“On that note,” Eliot said sharply, moving in close enough to Faith that Skye felt her adrenaline spike, “I’m going to see what’s keeping Hardison.” He caught Faith’s eye. “You two get your contact info straightened out – I want to be on our way home within the hour.”


End file.
